bUSINESS & FINANCE

Eighty-hour weeks. Demanding work. A high chance of failure. The startup world is gruelling. It's no surprise entrepreneurs (particularly founders) are up to 49% more likely to report a mental health condition than other workers.

Swede David Brudö is an example of an entrepreneur who turned this problem into a competitive advantage. An avid snowboarder, he describes startups as the "extreme sport" of the business world. During the early 2000s, he worked for several different startups and struggled with the grueling pace of work.

"Most startups fail, statistically, so the odds aren't the best. That, of course, has a mental toll on you because there's a constant pressure, more or less," he said.

The pressure Brudö felt was exacerbated by depression, a condition he has faced on and off since his teenage years. "I lived in Sweden; I had a roof over my head; I had food on my plate. I had more material stuff than I would ever need. But I wasn’t feeling grateful," he said.

"Instead I was feeling increased amounts of worry, anxiety, stress, much work related. That … took over me as a person." Brudö's wife suggested he see a psychologist to work through these challenges. At first, Brudö felt getting help was a sign of weakness.

"I STARTED TO READ BOOKS ON PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. FORTUNATELY, HOWEVER, THIS INTERNAL INSIGHT JOURNEY … GOT ME TO UNDERSTAND THAT SEEING A SHRINK ISN'T THAT BAD."

Another Direction

After therapy, Brudö applied an analytical mind cultivated in the business world to addressing mental health. He was surprised to discover mental health conditions are a leading contributor to sick leave and that care mostly addresses the symptoms rather than the root cause.

"Mental health conditions cost more than cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes put together," he said. "I thought I was just someone that wasn't able to cope with the pressure, but I realized I was not unique. So that led me on to thinking, 'Why can't we approach this from another direction?'"

That other direction led Brudö to set up Remente in 2011 with cofounder Niklas Forser. His team decided to create a pre-emptive tool for addressing mental health rather than one that helps people only after they experience burnout, stress and depression.

Today, Remente helps people set goals and improve areas of their personal life. These include: sleeping better, finding more friends at work, reading more books or cultivating a skill. It also helps people with problems like depression and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The company provided these services via a web app before launching a mobile version. It claims up to 2,000 new users a day and has surpassed 1.3 million users.

"Phones [and] the digital devices we use today … make us more depressed and stressed. What if we could use these devices to help us instead of the other way around?" Brudö asked.

His team was recently invited to speak at the American Psychiatric Association 2019 Annual Meeting in San Francisco as an example of mental health innovation. He couldn't have imagined this happening years ago.

"We feel it's really super cool, because when we started out, people said, 'You can't do this with an app. It's not possible.'" Today, the reality is quite different. "The whole process of the app is helping users understand where they are right now and where they want to be and help them get there."

"The whole process of the app is helping users understand where they are right now and where they want to be and help them get there."

Since founding Remente, Brudö and his wife have had two children. Today, he balances the demands of running a startup with a structured home life and snowboarding.

Brudö said about work-life balance:

Once you get into that process, things become so much simpler and … will relieve you from stress. Because you're in control, you're in the driver seat of your life.

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